


Good Grief

by sporeshroom



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: ...yeah, Gen, Multi, Suicidal Ideation, mentioned and vague but yeah still
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:35:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26970745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sporeshroom/pseuds/sporeshroom
Summary: The Knight defeats Hornet. Of course they do; there isn’t anything in any world, it seems, that could stop them. (Unfair, they think.) And at the fight's end, they kneel beside the corpse of their sibling, eyes empty to onlookers, but full with Void.
Relationships: Greenpath Vessel & Salubra (Hollow Knight), Greenpath Vessel & Seer (Hollow Knight), Greenpath Vessel & The Knight (Hollow Knight), Greenpath Vessel/Tiso (Hollow Knight)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 39





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO GAMERS

They do not fight their sister long. She stares into their swirling eye sockets, and they know she looks through them. They are as empty to her as their sibling was to the King.

The betrayal, when she strikes their killing blow, is not that she does so at all— rather that it is with their own weapon, and not hers. Their nail, though dull, shreds the last paper-thin layer of their shell, and the Void in them disperses in one final, violent burst.

That has happened to them before, becoming a separate shade and shell. This is different. There is no solid form of Void, and their shell does not shatter into soul, to retreat and reform somewhere safer. Rather, their body stays— propped off the ground only by their own nail, stabbed through their thorax— and their conscious spreads, thinner than a weaver’s thread, to every corner of the room.

There’s a confusion first, and then fear that burrows deep into even their flesh, and _stays_. _What do they do now? Oh_ god _, what do they do now?_

It’s not long that they have to wait for— not an answer, but the next in this series of events to occur.

Their sister is not even done staring at their felled body when she lifts her head to glare. For into the cavern tumbles one more vessel. The Knight is here.

_They remember, they do. The sibling who would climb, even past the falling bodies of vessels, even when the floor was made of shell and bone. Up, past the spikes, past fully formed masks, always one handhold behind the sibling who would become The Hollow Knight. They who would be cast back down, and still be the second to leave, and the first leave of their own accord. They who would leave Hallownest altogether. They who made their own name. They who earned it. They remember The Knight._

The vessel in Greenpath does not have a name— they never took one, and they were never given one.

The Knight does not seem to remember them for it, or perhaps Hornet’s needle distracts them. There are no second glances to the— the corpse, on the floor. In four short minutes, and nineteen long dashes, Hornet shreds The Knight’s shell. _Their_ shade, however, is intact. It spares an upwards glance to the Void cobwebbing the arena, and floats off, unbothered.

The Knight defeats Hornet. Of course they do; there isn’t anything in any world, it seems, that could stop them. ( _Unfair,_ they think.) And at the fight's end, they kneel beside the corpse of their sibling, eyes empty to onlookers, but full with Void.

A moment for mourning, they think, it’s a moment of recognition from their sibling that they’re grateful for. Would that they could retake their body, they think they would sweep up The Knight in their arms, and not allow them to travel this world alone. It’s a world too empty of company, and too full of threat to be alone in. They had known that, and had it engraved on their exoskeleton over and over, that nothing was safe.

But they cannot move, cannot focus the Void or the soul or the will to reform, can do nothing but watch The Knight as they pay their respects alone— _Oh. Oh, no that’s not mourning. That’s theft,_ they think, as their most respected sibling unclasps the cloak from their corpse, and wraps it around their own neck.

_Theft of a gift_ , they think again, seeing how ill the cloak fits the smaller bug. Ill as it should. That cloak was made—altered— for _them_.

The Knight tries it, the new found speed and mobility to come from dashing, and they almost crush their face into the moss-covered cave walls. They do not make it far.

As Void, the tremors and flavours of the air are so much more obvious to them. The atmosphere seems to thicken, significantly more humid with the presence of dreams. Before their eyes, and before their shell, the humidity weaves itself together into three bugs they had never seen in person before, but could recognise anywhere. Their masks are a dead giveaway.

The Dreamers appear to personally turn their sibling back, and The Knight collapses with strings cut. The dreams evaporate.

Not that it works. Their sibling stands, gives their _stolen_ cloak one quick brush to rid it of dirt and leaves, and dashes forwards out of the cave. _With their stolen cloak._

And they can’t do anything but watch— no voice to call out, and no hands to stop them— just a weak presence coating the cavern ceiling.

Even when they focus, the Void congeals only the slightest.

They may be trapped. Further up, The Knight climbs out of the tunnel they entered through, having gone in a circle, completely avoiding the arena. Avoiding _them_ , surely.

And so, for the first time ever, they are both trapped and alone. Previously it had only ever been one or the other.

_Trapped, in the Abyss, surrounded by their many, many siblings; living and dead, on the floor and raining down from the cliffs above._

_Alone, in Deepnest, separated from their siblings and lost in that hostile, not-Void darkness._

_Trapped, in Greenpath, with just one sibling this time. Hornet cries out with a voice denied to vessels— denied to them— and her needle is sharp, sharp, when it briefly severs their hand from arm. The Void reforms but their nail is gone to the floor, and there is no time to retrieve it, for she iscrying out again, lunging again._

It is not an experience they would have chosen for themself. With nothing else to do, they continue to focus. It feels like trying to funnel a room full of mostly dispersed Void through a pin sized opening into a much smaller container; essentially, that’s exactly what it is. None of the laws of science, or nature, or the universe are on their side in this.

They have just barely started to make progress—but they have _started_ — when they hear another bug, climbing up the same way The Knight had left, and they are startled. They hadn’t realised someone else was in these caverns. The Mosskin are, obviously, but they don’t make the same noises, and they were to be expected. This break in concentration undoes days of focus, all Void and shade wheezing out into the cavern before they can put stop to it.

They double down; they cannot make the same mistake.

_Vaguely, they’re aware that the room is no longer empty, that Mosskin chirp and mutter around their shell, angrily, anxiously. Another enters, hand encircling that of a taller Mosskin— a Moss Knight, that trails behind. The Mosskin crowding the corpse back off, as the Moss Knight draws near. She grabs the hilt of the Vessel’s nail. Shell will flake and decay, but metal will remain a much longer reminder of Hallownest’s intrusion, and the King’s violence._

_Were they to die in another room, their corpse would have been left as it was, evidence that Greenpath’s laws worked, and that those who could not live without the King’s structures would not live long. But they died so close to the Lake of Unn, and the Mosskin Tribe did not need proof of the Wyrm’s arrogance at their place of worship, and the nail was as bright a mark of Hallownest’s crafts, as an idol of the King._

_The Moss Knight drags the nail free from crumbling soul shell, and the stopper is removed. Void rushes from every corner of the room to the centre of the shell, with the gravitational force of a small star. It fills their exoskeleton, and continues to solidify, and thickening over the outside like a coating of tar. The Mosskin have fled, they realise, with a forgotten clarity, their awareness based now inside the shell, rather than stretched over the whole large cavern. This is the last thing they think for a long time._

_The tarry Void dries, and crusts, fully cocooning their shell. The outside turns solid, and the inners liquify._

There is a cracking sound, very near to their mask, and something flakes away from their face. They reach to split open their trappings with their claws, and find the walls much closer than they thought. That, or their reach is much longer than before.

They slash, and light spills in from the outer room. They crawl out, onto the dirt. _Their arms_ are _longer_ , they think.

It’s a bulbous and tarry cocoon that they’ve crawled out of, and liquid Void has spilled from it onto the floor with them. The ground is further when they stand, the oily puddle at their feet swirling, as if to give them the vertigo of real cliff height.

There’s a solid and comforting weight over their shoulders and back, as if they still have their cloak with them. Unthinking, they begin to dash back towards the cocoon, realise that they can’t do so without their mothering cloak, prepare to bail when they fall and— don’t. They don’t fall.

What happens instead takes them a few minutes to wrap their head around. Instead, the wings— _wings_ — on their back unfurl to propel them forward, and recoil when they come to a stop. Those certainly had not been there before.

They had witnessed very few moults; very few siblings had lived long enough or well enough to develop a new form. They had assumed, where it to happen as it had, that they would turn out more like the denizens of their surrounding area. Like the Mosskin, in this case.

But it makes sense, they suppose. Their mothwing cloak had been the only gift given to _them_ , rather than to a vessel, and it was their most prized possession, wrapped around their trembling shoulders, or dripping shell, or hidden mask every time that they needed it.

They had valued (loved) it so much that when it was taken, they grew it back in moult like a lost limb.

Now there was just one thing left to do to finish, and they know this instinctually, even having left for this part of every siblings moult, out of respect.

The inside of the cocoon blocks out all light, as dark as their birthplace, and the Void that made all of it up. Even still, they palm the walls and it doesn’t take long to find what they were searching for. They pry their nail out of the crust, and find that they’re charm necklace and singular charm is wrapped around the hilt. They slip it over their horns, and secure it in a ruff of fur at their neck, same as the one on their old cloak. Not part of them before, but familiar enough that it still fits.

With seven quick slashes, the cocoon bursts. Void spurts out, and they focus on dragging it into their own shell.

They leave behind no trace of their death, or their metamorphosis, save for a pale bald patch in the moss.

Traversing Greenpath was easy before. It’s not much harder now, but it’s certainly not any easier for them.

Threats are easy to bat away now, but they miss more often than not, either overshooting or overcompensating for the extra reach, and falling short. Theirs arms are longer, but their nail is shorter in comparison, shorter than it was. They aren’t used to it.

Jumps that they couldn’t make before are in reach, and with their wings they can reach further and higher. They almost propel themselves into thorn or acid far too many times, barely saved with a flap of their wings to take them to solid ground.

Four hours into their trek, they pull into an empty slit in the cave wall. They don’t fit in it as they remembered, but there is still space enough to sit, to lean against the wall and shake. They have been holding together as best they can, for any mistake could undo all the progress they have made.

They thought they would die to the Gendered Child, as so many siblings have. Then, it was being trapped, without even the option to sink back down to the Abyss, defeated. Then, swarming into a shell far too small, and crystallising in and around it. And now, they can hardly move without threats, all so much closer in their larger body.

They need patience, and they need their wits, and they need to be present if they are to make it anywhere alive. So they wait, and they rest, moth wings wrapped around them. A familiar comfort for a familiar fear, just slightly to the left.

The Forgotten Crossroads is significantly easier to traverse, and they’re getting used to their new shell. While the aspic mothers are awful, with wings it’s not so bad. And they would take vengeflies over squits any day. They do still probably need to reforge their nail. It’s not one that can be so easily replaced, but it _is_ damaged, and shorter than they’d like.

There’s a charm merchant, they remember, in one of the far corners of the Crossroads. She lives close to the Blue Lake, and the warm, salty air seeps through a tunnel, and fills her store. It brings with it the nostalgia of the dead, and all the memories dripped into the lake over the years, and they fill her head with static.

Makes it hard for her to remember what time she’s in, and where she is. Or maybe it’s easier to think that her town is still lively, and it’s not just her own voice on the breeze.

They try to follow signage to the village— for surely a village would be marked— but in their education they were only taught three words, and the rest were scrambled beyond recognition in their head. So it was unsurprising to them that they were lost.

Somewhere along the line they end up inside a stag station. They’ve never used one, and only seen the inside of one a handful of times. Before, in Hallownest’s prime, a vessel would have been too recognisable for comfort— and besides, they had no geo. After, by the time they knew where to find it, the stag stations were shut, as with all the kingdom’s infrastructure. With Hallownest’s decay, all it built crumbled too.

But this stag station is still empty of wildlife, and full of seats. They need to rest, before their frustration gets them lost even further.

They curl up on a bench, legs tucked up and wings folded, as small as they can make themself. It’s a habit born of a lifetime of hiding, and it’s not needed now— especially in the open as they are— but it’s comforting to feel that little bit safer.

Faintly, they hear tapping, different from the muffled insects outside, and getting clearer and louder. They tense, prepared to grab their nail should they need it, but they know this is likely a traveller, not an enemy.

They still tilt to face the hallway ever so slightly, to be prepared. A tall bug carrying a shield on his back— _every bug seemed tall before, but is he? They might be taller now_ — rounds the corner, and they relax, just a little. It is just a traveller.

He’s dabbing at an eroded acid spot on the right shoulder of his armour, but he stops as soon as he sees them, steps faltering just a little. With one hand he rips the blue cloth up over his head, hiding away his antennas, and revealing it to be a hood. With the other, he wrenches the shield from his back onto his arm, as if they’re going to pull out their nail and start slashing. _Actually_ …they take their hand off the hilt.

_Afraid to show weakness,_ they think, and turn to face away. It’s understandable, in a world like this one. But this bug doesn’t take the out to avoid interaction, and instead storms over and all but shoves himself into the same seat as them, on the very opposite side.

They scoot over more to their side to give him space, but he stays where he is, almost falling off the bench. If they could laugh, they think they’d be trying not to laugh at him right now.

He just sneers over one shoulder at them. “Pale thing. I thought you a warrior, but you use these old lines?” His voice is droning and nasally. “Pathetic. A real warrior carries himself to his battles, without such assistance.” He speaks with conviction, at least. The sound of his voice is still enough to almost put them immediately to sleep. They pay no mind to the words themselves; he speaks with enough familiarity to surely not be talking to them. They barely even know how stag stations work, and this one is empty.

Their head droops, and the traveller scoffs, startling them awake.

“The trip down here can’t possibly have been that exhausting for you. You’re weaker than I thought.” He turns his head away.

They glance around. There really is no one else there, and he doesn’t seem to be talking to himself. But they don’t know him. _Mistaken identity maybe?_ Either way, they have nothing to say to this traveller, and no way to say it.

This is no longer the peaceful place it was, so they untuck their legs, hop off the bench and leave.

The traveller flinches in their peripheral.

In a few hours, they claw their way out of a very narrow, natural tunnel, and are hit by a breeze. They followed it because they vaguely remembered something like it, but they as grew smaller and narrower they were convinced they would have to turn around before they became trapped.

It was fine, in the end. _Evidently_.

They follow the breeze. Though they cannot smell salt on the air, or smell at all, they are certain it is there. They are right.

Charm Lover Salubra’s voice carries a fair way from her shop, if the unlit windows of crumbling houses weren’t clues enough that this was her ghost town.

“Oh, you’re back so soon!” She says when they walk in. They don’t think it’s soon. It’s been a long, long time.

“Or..no, I’m sorry I must have thought you someone else,” she laughs it off. _Twice in one day?_ , they think. “I do remember you, though it has been a while. My lovely, you have grown so much!” Which is true, but they’re here to buy. They try to point to the charms nestled in silk under her glass counter. “You just look so much like…oho you wouldn’t happen to be related?”

They tilt their head, trying to convey a question. Salubra had always been good at listening to body language, and she still is. “One of my best customers looks a lot like you, you know. Both such handsome figures, oh! I must be the talk of the town,” She smiles even wider, and her eyes seem to crinkle even further shut.

It clicks. _The Knight_.

They try to gesture height, and draw the knights horns over their own. Salubra seems to see, even with her eyes closed. “Oh you _do_ know each other? How swell, that my two favourite customers are acquainted. Mmmm, but what were we going to talk about? Oh yes, Charms!” _Yes. Charms_. “You didn’t have any last time you visited, but I see you’ve started your own collection,” she points at the lone charm on their necklace. It must have been dislodged in their metamorphosis. They hadn’t even noticed.

They nod, and point to a shiny silver charm. Salubra grins. “Ah, that Charm’s name is Longnail! The nail you wield, of course, is adorable! But it seems just little short for you now, oho! That Charm will bring all your enemies into your reach,” She titters.

Perfect. They tap the glass above it again, and Salubra uses the key hanging from her longest necklace to unlock the draw, and pull it out. She retrieves the charm, and places it delicately onto a pile of silk squares. “That will be 300 geo today,” she grins, and makes no further move.

They reach under their cloak to retrieve the fossils. They do have 300, fortunately, but not much more.

Salubra counts it out into a drawstring bag, and places that into an unseen draw on her side of the counter. Then she swiftly wraps Longnail up in silk, and deftly secures the packaging with a dulled red ribbon.

They nod in thanks, and she waves them out as they leave, with a last remark that they “Should come back any time that you like, honeypie!”

They take the time to rest on the bench outside, so that they can string Longnail onto their charm necklace, next to Voices of the Deep. Their only other charm was given to them by a sibling, who took it off the body of a Hallownest bug at an unfinished tram site in Deepnest.

Maybe it was meant to allow for those Hallownest bugs to communicate with Deepnest’s denizens through a language barrier. Vessels, however, could not speak at all, so the charm’s only discernible effect was translating the mutters of the wildlife. Their sibling saw no worth in it because they didn’t want to hear what the dirtcarver’s had to say.

They, personally, didn’t mind either way. But as a gift from a sibling they would likely never see again, they keep Voices of the Deep close, always.

The necklace goes back into their ruff.

The high up entrance to the Blue Lake is exactly as they remember it; small, hidden, and hard to get up to. They are fortunate to not have to worry about falling.

_The low terminal velocity of vessels hadn’t helped so many of their siblings. It wasn’t the fall to do them in, anyways._

The climb down the other side is short, and they expect to be met with the crushing vastness and emptiness of the cavern. They are not.

The same traveller from earlier stands on the sand of the shore, staring out at the lake. His shield is on his arm again, and they think that might be its permanent position.

They scuff their feet against the rocks and sand as they walk up. Best not to startle anyone, and while they have not seen a weapon, that doesn’t mean he is toothless.

He glances over when they come to a stop beside him. They were right; they are taller.

“Hmph. So you are not the pale thing. You should have said,” his tone turns accusatory. “Or did you just enjoy watching me make a fool of myself?”

They would sigh if they could. It always comes down to this. Fortunately, by now they have a fairly solid way of explaining.

They tap their mask, directly over their lack of mouth, shake their head, and try their very best to make sound. As always, all they can do is cause the Void behind their mask to bubble wetly, and make a sad glorp as it re-solidifies.

By the face the traveller makes, he gets the point. “If that’s all you can say, don’t bother. It’s not something anyone wants to hear.”

They tap their mask once more, and make an ‘x’ with their claws, both to agree, and to drive home the point. Never can be too safe.

The traveller curls his lip at them, either in irritation or disgust. “I am Tiso. I am in search of an arena I have heard of, far below. Though your nail is in horrid state, I saw how you wield it with practice,” they stiffen, unaware that they were any point being watched, but Tiso is facing the lake. Did he also see how lost they became? “If it’s combat you seek, you would do well to find that arena too. We will see then, who is the better combatant.”

They will absolutely not be doing that.

They turn to face the lake also, away from this strange warrior, and the rude conviction he has for his sad aspirations. Funny that he should be so determined not to be made a fool of if the Colosseum is what he seeks. And they know that it is. They know also, that it’s rigged, and that those who go willingly to fight already know what the outcome will be. Await it, even.

“Arrgh, I hate this place. It’s far too peaceful. Serenity will dull you, if you spend too long in it,” Tiso tells them in a snarl. They think maybe he could stand to be dulled, just a bit, if this is how he always is to strangers.

Or maybe he’s just bored enough that any company or distraction is welcome. By the way Tiso glares at it, the Blue Lake will delay him, hopefully long enough that he rethinks his aims.

Not them, though. For them, water has never been a problem, and they instinctually that even their new wings don’t change that fact.

When it seems Tiso has nothing else to say, they dash forward, splashing into the water, and start to swim. There’s a scramble of rocks and sand behind them, and they hear muffled cursing. They turn back, and Tiso is standing exactly where he was, arms crossed, and glare much stronger and much more pointed. At them. But even from here, they can see the upset sand marks and footprints at his feet, where he must have startled forward.

He doesn’t say anything. They turn back around, and continue to swim.

Occasionally they use their wings, though they cannot fly for long at all. The wings were made more to propel them forwards, or up, but they still seem to make the journey shorter. It at least cuts down the tedium of swimming for hours and hours through an endless cavern.

They would have rested longer at the other shore, but they didn’t want to spend any longer with that sad warrior, his ill-advised aspirations, and his awful voice.

When they eventually drag themself onto the far shore they stay collapsed in the sand, unminding of how it grits against their wings. They feel a part of them had soaked out into the lake in their swim; some memory or some aspect of their self. The lake holds onto everything that enters it.

They don’t really need sleep, but they’re so tired. Anything from here on out will just be more effort, or more danger, or more sorrow, they know it.

In a few hours, they crawl off the small beach. The sand falls clean from their dried wings.

The Resting Grounds are much quieter than they remember, and much more sombre, even for a graveyard.

They climb up from the smooth walls and platforms into the cemetery proper. The stones and gravel underfoot still look like smooth and rounded masks. Their eyes stay fixed away, and they wander through.

The Resting Grounds are far emptier than they were, but they only know one person to look for. In one of the distant corner rooms they find her singing to herself. The Seer.

She stands from where she crouched over a small grave, and faces them with blind eyes. Her stance relaxes with recognition when they come to stand beside her.

She resumes kneeling, and retrieves a soft rag from a ceramic bowl of water that they hadn’t noticed before.

“Aahhh, you’ve found your way back to this place. I had thought you may have reached your final destination,” the Seer sponges the bottom of the little headstone with the cloth. The rock glistens with moisture and mud. “I hardly expected to be faced with my own cloak on a stranger’s shoulders…Ah but you don’t seem to need it any more do you?”

She sets down the cloth to trade it for a small brush, and begins to scour the dirt from the rock. “ I was tempted to tell them not to drag it along the floor so much as they did. It was meant to allow you to reach the places you couldn’t, and it hardly helps you to move if you trip over it at every step. Nevermind the threads will fray.”

“But I suppose if you thought it worth to gift, it has served it’s purpose well,” the Seer swaps back to the rag.

This is true, they know. But they seem to have been unknowing walking directly in the The Knight’s footsteps, with no tangible trace of their actual sibling.

Their initial frustration had settled; The Knight couldn’t have known they were alive, and they couldn’t fault their sibling for taking from a corpse. An empty shell had no need for its possessions.

They would still like to find them though. The Knight is their sibling— and alive, too.

They would try to ask the Seer, but she cannot see, and they cannot speak. They still tap her arm. It has been a long, long, time, and anything at all she had to say to them was worthwhile.

She turns, milky purple eyes fixed somewhere in the distance, and passes them the almost-dried rag.

“Help me here,” she says. “Delicate with this one, it’s fragile. Go from the bottom up, and try to swab off some of the dirt.”

They dip the rag into the basin and the Seer stays their hand. “That’s fine, but wring it out as well. For others it’s fine, but the words on this headstone are eroding, and too much water will render them unreadable.”

They wring out the rag, and wonder who would read this gravestone anyways; who was buried here, and what did those who lay them down they have to say? They and the Seer were the only one’s here, they knew by now; no sounds of other bugs echoed through the cavern walls. All they could hear was the very distant lapping of water on the shores of the Blue Lake, and the equally distant wind howling through the catacombs from somewhere outside the crater in which the world was formed. Faintly also, was the marching of one of Hallownest’s infected guards.

Certainly, neither they nor the Seer would be reading the stones; they could not read the words and she could not see them. They doubted the infected would read them either.

They work their way through the rows and rows of graves. Sometimes the Seer trades her small brush for a larger one, with stronger bristles, or a wooden stick to scour moss and lichen, or a softer brush to just lightly dust out excess dirt from words carved on hardened mud or terracotta headstones.

They carry the bowl and trail along behind her. “I would not have had you do this last time you were here,” she tells them. They remember. “There were more of us to do it then. I am the last moth breathing now, I am sure.”

She pauses outside the entrance to another cave. “I know more now than I did then. I know just how the wyrm came to stand at the centre of the world. But I don’t suppose his nature is news to you. I know more about you too. Come in, the water in that bowl is too dirtied to continue to use.” They look down. It is. And she turns, and leads them in.

It’s not another corner of the cemetery inside. It’s a smaller cave, one of many based on the tunnels in the cavern outside. At the end, there is a faded purple tent strung ceiling to floor. Blankets— or possibly other tent tarps— cover the packed earth ground inside what must be the Seer’s home.

It had changed from when they last saw it. Or perhaps the lack of other tents, noise, and generally atmosphere had thrown them off. It had been a long time.

The Seer starts a cooking fire in one of the empty tent plots. There’s a built up ring of rocks to catch the ash, that tell them she has done this often. She ferries over a pot of water, and some mugs, and they come to hover beside her but she shoos them back.

“There are plenty of cushions in my tent that are specifically for sitting. Don’t waste them standing over here,” she says.

In a few minutes she brings over two steaming mugs. They don’t know if it’s tea, or soup, or just boiling water. They can’t smell, and they can’t really drink, but they appreciate the warmth of the worn ceramic, and rough edges of the chipped lip under their hands.

“I found the other visitor in a dream, when they were here earlier. The wyrm’s Dreamers dragged them there with the little strength they have left.” They start. This wasn’t the first time The Knight had been stopped by the Dreamers, but it was certainly more aggressive than in Greenpath. _Maybe they were getting desperate?_

They stomp the ground, trying to catch the Seer’s attention, though they have no reliable way of conveying what they remember to her. They can only say one thing, trust in her intuition, and hope that it helps.

“Do you know something about that?” She asks, curiosity shading her croaking voice. They tap their hand against the ground, this time using seven of the ten letters they recognise to spell out their siblings’ name.

_—.….—.——. ..——..…—_

_T-H-E-K-N-I-G-H-T_.

This was reliant on the Seer understanding what each tapped syllable meant. They had forgotten the days before their charades attempts became more successful, and before bugs were willing to try to listen to their way of speaking. To be so voiceless again was…disheartening. Upsetting. Scary.

The Seer had not been blind the last time— the first time— they came to the Resting Grounds. But there was no need to doubt her.

“The Knight, then? The wyrm left you with so little to say.” They knew this. Their education had not been comprehensive, and their entire communication and understand of Hallownest’s language came from knowing three symbols, ten letters, and ten tapped out phrases to represent those letters.

It was not useful. They did not know why all the king left to his thousands of children was the name he gave to their sibling. A reminder maybe, of their purpose, and their failure to be exactly as he wanted them.

“Did you have a name too, then? If you ever told me, I cannot recall.”

They are silent. They know that their silence is answer enough.

“Ahhhh…I gifted The Knight something that I had been holding on to for a long time. A sacred blade, to cut their way out of that fading memory the Dreamers would leave them in,” she turns to face them head on, though her eyes do not find their face. “I had thought there was nothing left to give to you, but perhaps I can give you a name, if that is something you want.”

They can think of nothing they would want more. They tap the ground in excitement.

“Ah, something that you could spell might be appropriate…alright. I give you the name Noth. It is yours to use if you want it.”

_—.————.…_

_N-O-T-H._

They try it out. A gift from a precious friend, same as their cloak, and same as their charm. They will keep it close to them, they think.

“It is…ahh, you will be leaving soon won’t you?” the Seer backtracks. She is not wrong though. It is not their place to stay, and they have a living sibling to find. “The Knight took the elevator down to the city, I believe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact in my first hk play through I didnt know anything about the game and I was determined not to look anything up if I was stuck (this resolve didnt last forever but it did last a fair while). so I did NOT know how stag stations worked. I knew there were something but I didnt know what. it took me until unlocking kings station (my 7th out of 10 stations!) to figure out you had to hit the bell 😭😭 guess the smack everything mindset wasn't instilled in me yet
> 
> im falseknight on tumblr


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah so this is not a real chapter but it is art for the last one
> 
> and heres the links for it on [tumblr](https://falseknight.tumblr.com/post/632473578830512128/so-that-was-not-who-he-was-expecting-it-to-be-for)

that was not who he thought it was


End file.
